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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28196064">Inside The Fire With My Regrets</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG'>DoreyG</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Born Again [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Frey &amp; McGray Series - Oscar de Muriel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Accidental Soulbond, Anal Sex, Developing Relationship, Getting Together, M/M, Masturbation, Rimming, Second Time, Throat grabbing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 22:49:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,130</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28196064</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He’d thought it’d all be fine when they finally put their torn clothes back on and staggered down the mountain - more a steep hill, when there hadn’t been a world ending storm going on - again. Well, not <i>fine</i> fine but at least not more terrible than it already was. He’d expected it to be awkward for a good while, and maybe for Frey to never be able to look at him again and flee back to Gloucestershire with all due haste, but a normal kind of awkward. He’d expected all this unfortunate supernatural shit to settle down for at least a while, to leave them with just normal human problems and nothing more.</p><p>This optimism, and he was willing to admit that it was just bloody minded optimism and nothing more, had lasted right up until the point where he had collapsed face down on the sofa in his study that night and attempted to get some well earned rest. He’d woken up gasping and confused, hard from memories of getting fucked, and things had only got worse from there.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ian Frey/Adolphus "Nine Nails" McGray</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Born Again [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2101131</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Inside The Fire With My Regrets</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts">linndechir</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Prologue</b>
</p><p>So.</p><p>Two weeks ago he and Frey had had to fuck to save the world. It had been one of the best and worst experiences of his life. The best, because the world had been saved and he'd got to have the best sex he’d ever had into the bargain. The worst because the world had needed to be saved, they hadn't exactly had a choice about the fucking and it'd been the best sex that either of them had ever had which was just a bit <i>awkward</i> considering.</p><p>He wasn't a coward, life hadn't really afforded him that luxury, but he would've been perfectly happy to just bury his head in the sand and forget the situation had ever happened. Focus on the rebuilding effort instead, or the amount of new supernatural crimes, or finding whoever had attempted to end the world in the first place. Entirely forget what they'd done together, the way that Frey had looked at him and kissed him and arched up underneath him with abandon.</p><p>Unfortunately the world, even if they had just busted their balls to save it, was nowhere near that kind.</p><p>“You have got to be joking!” Frey spluttered, pacing around the room with wide eyes and an expression of utter panic on his face. He hadn’t seen him so out of sorts since… Well, since he’d had to break the news to him that the only way to save the world was to fuck over a stone plinth in a rather unpleasant cave. “You have got to be <i>kidding</i> me, Nine Nails!”</p><p>“Unfortunately, I’m not,” he said, and made a face. For once in his life he knew exactly how Frey was feeling, and it wasn’t just because he’d discovered a previously untapped pocket of empathy in these extremely fucking trying times. </p><p>He’d thought it’d all be fine when they finally put their torn clothes back on and staggered down the mountain - more a steep hill, when there hadn’t been a world ending storm going on - again. Well, not <i>fine</i> fine but at least not more terrible than it already was. He’d expected it to be awkward for a good while, and maybe for Frey to never be able to look at him again and flee back to Gloucestershire with all due haste, but a normal kind of awkward. He’d expected all this unfortunate supernatural shit to settle down for at least a while, to leave them with just normal human problems and nothing more.</p><p>This optimism, and he was willing to admit that it was just bloody minded optimism and nothing more, had lasted right up until the point where he had collapsed face down on the sofa in his study that night and attempted to get some well earned rest. He’d woken up gasping and confused, hard from memories of getting fucked, and things had only got worse from there. Suddenly he was dreaming dreams that weren’t his own every time he tried to close his eyes, suddenly he was feeling emotions that he’d never experienced before, suddenly strange thoughts that weren’t his own were flitting wildly through his head all the damn time.</p><p>He really was good at denial, and he really would’ve liked to hone that skill a little more, but soon it became absolutely impossible. Frey’s dreams - Frey’s emotions and thoughts and memories and <i>everything</i> - were suddenly inside his head, and he genuinely had no idea what to do about that.</p><p>It should’ve been a mercy that Frey was obviously just as confused as him, but it really wasn’t. He kept marching around the room wildly, still wide eyed and looking about five seconds away from tearing his hair out in horror. “This can’t be real, Nine Nails! Things like this just don’t <i>happen</i>.”</p><p>“Neither does the end of the fucking world, and yet we both remember last week,” he said levelly, and then abandoned all attempt at levelness in the face of Frey’s continuing panic and huffed out an angry sigh instead. It got Frey glaring at him instead of having a breakdown all over his study, so he supposed that was a positive. “Look, can you please get through having your snit fit and just acknowledge that this is actually happening already?”</p><p>Frey sent him a defiant look, a familiar flash of stubborn rage alongside it in a way that had him biting back an entirely inappropriate smile. “Why the fuck should I?”</p><p>“Because the quicker you acknowledge this the quicker we can fix it,” he said, and growled when Frey ignored him in favour of continued pacing and panicking. He stood up, grabbed Frey’s arm and tried his very hardest to ignore the disorientating flash of the feeling of a rough palm wrapping around his own arm. “Frey. For fuck’s sake, <i>stop</i>.”</p><p>Frey did stop, albeit reluctantly, and cast him another defiant look. It didn’t work so well, not this time. Their eyes met, and suddenly all he could remember was what they’d done just a week ago to save the world. The horrible flash of realization of what they had to do, the way that Frey had downright thrown himself at him when the decision had been made, the sweet arch of Frey’s body underneath him as they’d fallen apart together… It was all deeply unsettling, and made all the worse by the fact that - in that moment - he couldn’t quite sort out what memories were his and what memories were Frey’s.</p><p>Frey took in a deep and unsteady breath, obviously equally affected, and yanked his arm away. “Stop it.”</p><p>“Sorry,” he said, and for once in his life absolutely meant it. It wasn’t like Frey was his favourite person in the world, he lied to himself, but he still deserved better than what had happened. He still deserved better than what was happening now, the two of them mixed up in each other even more than they already were. </p><p>Frey felt his regret, and that only seemed to make things worse. He took another sharp step back, looked like he’d return to pacing for a long moment but instead just took in a deep breath and tilted his chin back. “So, fixing this bizarre situation.”</p><p>He could feel that Frey was barely holding it together, despite his desperate attempts to appear calm and collected, but he decided to be kind and ignore that. No point in pointing out how on edge Frey was, especially when he was just as on edge himself. “Glad to see that you’re actually interested in that sort of thing, and not just in sulking until kingdom come.”</p><p>“Of course I’m interested in doing something to fix this bizarre and unreasonable situation. Don’t be an idiot, Nine Nails,” Frey said crisply, seeming to gain courage in the face of his sarcasm. He’d always been mildly annoyed at Frey’s ability to neatly crush his emotions before now, but with a view of how the process worked inside his head he started to find it fascinatingly sad instead. “Since you’re bringing the subject up, I hope you already have some ideas?” </p><p>“Uh,” he said, and rubbed an awkward hand through his hair. Saw Frey’s fingers twitch too, and genuinely had no idea how to deal with it. “Not yet.”</p><p>Frey gave him an offended look, one that he would’ve usually called prissy and dismissed immediately. He was still willing to call it prissy, but he couldn’t dismiss it immediately once he’d felt the genuine flare of despair underneath. “Have you even looked?”</p><p>“<i>Percy</i>,” he said, annoyed, and didn’t bother to hide his own flare of irritation. Let Frey be exposed to all these emotions too, let Frey have to see things differently for the first time in his fucking life. “I’ve turned my entire library upside down, searching for a way to stop this. I could’ve sworn that Katerina had left me some other books alongside the one that told us how to fix the world, I just haven’t been able to dig them out yet.”</p><p>“I wonder why,” Frey said, casting a snooty glance all around his inner sanctum. He rolled his eyes at Frey’s snobbishness, and didn’t bother to hide it. “This may surprise you to hear, Nine Nails, but I’m not willing to base all my hopes on some mangy old books that a conwoman gave you. We need to try other things.”</p><p>“Katerina is not-” He started hotly, and rolled his eyes again as Frey only flapped a dismissive hand in his direction. “You know what? <i>Fine</i>. I’m hardly opposed to anything that leads to you getting the fuck out of my head. I’m guessing you already have plans?”</p><p>“One or two,” Frey said archly, forgetting for a moment that he could <i>tell</i> when he was feeling uncertain now. “And, unlike some people, I have been looking into the matter in case my initial plans don’t work out. I’d suggest you do the same, cultivate some actually sane ideas instead of just busying yourself in obsessing over totally insane theories that are going to get us nowhere.”</p><p>“Hey!” He protested, annoyed that Frey was able to rile him once more. He’d never met a man so able to get under his skin. Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that he was now actually inside his head, it wasn’t like anybody else had ever taken up so much of his mind. “My theories are perfectly sane. They helped us to save the world, didn’t they?”</p><p>“I suppose so, but-” Frey started, disgruntled and ready to argue, and then stopped. He would’ve usually felt smug about that, about knocking Frey off his balance and away from his usual snootiness, but he couldn’t now that he had a front row view of the inside of his head. He could tell that Frey was remembering just what they’d had to do to save the world, every moment of panic and determination and reluctant pleasure “...I feel they could’ve led us to a better solution. A saner solution.”</p><p>Usually he would’ve argued that, would’ve happily dragged them both into another pointless debate, but he didn’t feel quite up to it. They stared at each other helplessly instead, both lost in emotion and memory. He was well aware that he should’ve been angry, but instead he just felt sad and guilty and strangely wistful. He wished things were different, and he didn’t know if he wanted that difference to be never knowing what it was like to fuck Frey or knowing what it was like to fuck Frey in a completely different situation.</p><p>He cleared his throat, before Frey could call him out on the direction of his thoughts, and ducked his head. Best to move on, or at least try to. “I’ll get started on researching other solutions, while I keep trying to find my books.”</p><p>“Good,” Frey said hastily, and judging by the flush on his cheeks - and the flare of strange regret echoing through their bond - he was equally willing to put any disobedient thoughts behind them. “I’ll do the same. And while we do that, perhaps we can try something that might just work.”</p><p>--</p><p>
  <b>i. Just ignore it</b>
</p><p>Frey’s solution, as it turned out, was just as insane as he’d expected.</p><p>“You cannot be serious,” he said incredulously, staring at Frey from a near distance. He didn’t even bother to hide that he thought it was a stupid idea, Frey could take his scorn better than anybody else he’d ever met.</p><p>“Why not?” Frey asked, defiant yet again. He’d never met a man who was so stubbornly pig-headed, and the fact that he knew Frey could see the inside of his mind was the only thing that stopped him from outright admiring it. “Look, I know that you have a distressing commitment to paying attention to every single unsavory fact of life and I will reluctantly admit that that can sometimes be a positive thing. But take it from me, denial is also a perfectly reasonable way to go about things!”</p><p>“Yes,” he said dryly, still staring incredulously into Frey’s pretty - and he crushed <i>that</i> thought as quickly as possible - dark eyes. “Because your life has been going so wonderfully up until this point.”</p><p>“Apart from being forced to move up to Edinburgh and work intimately with a Scottish dickhead who believes eight insane things before breakfast every day…” Frey trailed off, as he considered that. He could tell, through the flash of shared memory between them, that Frey was intimately remembering just how off the rails his life had gone in the past two years. “You know what, that’s besides the point. Genuinely, can you provide one actual reason as to why we can’t just ignore this?”</p><p>He arched his eyebrows, made sure to look at Frey like he was absolutely insane. He felt it was warranted, for all that Frey liked to accuse him of having bats in the belfry this was a far more nuts plan than he’d ever been able to come up with. “Because it’s a totally fucking insane plan that will never work in a million fucking years?”</p><p>“The only reason it won’t work is you being ridiculously stubborn about it.” Frey sniffed, which really just took the cake. Like either of them had any business going around and accusing the other one of being stubborn. “It isn’t insane, and if we put our backs into it it <i>will</i> work. It’s incredibly simple, when you think of it. We just pretend that we can’t read each other’s thoughts and feel each other’s emotions, throw ourselves headlong into our work, pick Edinburgh back up off its knees and get on with our lives. What could possibly be better?”</p><p>Frey was trying so very hard to believe it, he could tell, but even he had an edge of uncertainty lurking underneath. He hesitated for a long moment, for once determined to actually find the right thing to say. “Frey…”</p><p>“Come on, Nine Nails,” Frey said, and his voice was imploring. Even worse than that, though, was the look in his eyes and the almost painful hope throbbing along the bond between them. “We were already planning to ignore the vast majority of what happened between us that day. What’s one more thing to add to the pile?”</p><p>They stared at each other for a long moment, him stunned and Frey still so awfully hopeful. He still thought the plan was insane, but Frey had succeeded in throwing him yet again. It didn’t help that his head was now full of Frey’s memories of the event, of Frey struggling up to the cave and feeling horrified when he was told what had to be done and getting thrown down on the plinth by somebody far stronger than him…</p><p>He swallowed, and ducked his head again. It felt strange, to give in to Frey without too much of a fight, but he supposed the man deserved at least that much. “You may have a point.”</p><p>“You know I do!” Frey said cheerfully, and a pulse of almost manic joy went through the bond. It wasn’t quite happiness, in the entire week they’d been in this strange arrangement he had never once felt Frey be <i>happy</i>, but he found himself inclined to bite his tongue anyway. “This is going to go wonderfully. We should obviously keep researching other options, just in case, but I really do think this is the path to victory. Don’t worry, Nine Nails, you’ll see!”</p><p>And in the beginning, he supposed he did. Even if it was reluctantly, and mainly because a part of him - a part that he wasn’t sure whether to call traitorous or sensible - was reluctant to put Frey through any more than he’d already faced.</p><p>They settled into ignoring things, and focused on the rebuilding effort instead. They couldn’t do that much, neither of them were exactly that skilled in rebuilding a town or saving an entire population, but they tried their best. They enforced law and order alongside the other coppers, for once seen as useful instead of just as fringe madmen to be looked down on. They helped out people as much as they could, distributing aid and trying to shift them all into safer places. They even helped guide around a few architects, who saw the demolition of the majority of Edinburgh as a blessing in disguise.</p><p>Alongside that, and far more usefully in his humble opinion, they kept trying to hunt down whoever had attempted to end the world. They both acknowledged that whoever it was probably hadn’t stayed around in Edinburgh after the event, but they still were determined to find traces of them anyway. Frey buried himself in so called sensible matters, tracing movements in and out of the city and seeing if certain tradesmen had noticed anything odd. He busied himself with far more practical matters, checking with Katerina’s former associates and seeing if there had been any rumours on the supernatural grapevine.</p><p>And alongside <i>that</i>, not quite usefully but most definitely importantly, he tentatively attempted to repair his relationship with Frey. He wasn’t quite sure why he did, it wasn’t as if they’d been exactly best friends even right before they’d had to fuck to save the world, but… He just felt like he had to. He kept inviting Frey to have a drink around his again, no matter how many times he turned him down. He kept sharing his theories about who’d triggered the whole world ending thing with Frey, even though he seemed determined to shoot every single one of them down. He kept poking Frey stubbornly out of his moods, even though he hardly seemed grateful to be poked so. They only really had each other when it came down to it, after all, and it seemed important to preserve that.</p><p>And if the bond remained stubbornly there every single step of the way? If he still experienced Frey’s dreams after he turned him down for drinks, or kept hearing Frey’s thoughts after every theory he shared, or kept feeling Frey’s despair fading to weary annoyance every single time he chose to poke him? He convinced himself that maybe that didn’t matter that much, that maybe the immensity of the thing between them really was growing smaller day by day. That maybe, just maybe, burying their heads in the sand really was a plan that could work long term.</p><p>In the end, he was almost able to convince himself that he believed it. In the end, he was almost able to convince himself that he felt good about believing it. And that remained the truth, right up until he collapsed into bed the weekend after they’d made their decision.</p><p>--</p><p>He didn’t usually sleep in his bed anymore. He generally managed to get about three hours of sleep every night, if he was lucky, and most of that was spent on the couch in his library or slumped over his desk. His bed just wasn’t a safe or comfortable place for him to sleep anymore, not since his parents had died.</p><p>The problem had got even worse since he'd fucked Frey to save the world, because now his dreams were filled with either memories of what had happened or the chaotic jumble of Frey’s own dreams. Hard enough to fall gasping out of bed after his own familiar nightmares, far harder to end up on the ground because of a vivid and painful dream of seeing Frey’s uncle’s throat get cut again and again. At least the sofa was slightly closer to the floor, at least it was slightly easier to come back to wakefulness if you were already uncomfortable in the first place. </p><p>He had genuinely considered, a fair few times over the years and with ever increasing passion lately, just getting rid of his bedroom and turning it into something far more useful. But just because he didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in a bed, didn’t mean that he couldn’t do other things there.</p><p>He had become fairly intimately acquainted with his hand ever since his parents had died. It wasn’t that he couldn’t seduce people, he knew full well that while a lot of people now saw him as a madman an about equal amount were still absolutely willing to crawl into his bed, but it always seemed like a bit too much effort. It was hard to connect with people who hadn’t seen just how awful life could get, hard to feel justified in dragging innocents into his level of shit. Better to just take care of the problem himself, to take a bit of the edge off and pretend like that was enough.</p><p>Ever since Frey had come into his life his sessions had increased to roughly once a night, for reasons that he didn’t feel like examining too closely. That had all come to an end when the whole saving the world thing had happened, out of a mixture of guilt and self awareness that he would only be able to think of Frey’s body beneath him, but the longing was still there. Boiling underneath, driving him even madder than he already was.</p><p>And tonight, after a long day spent chasing suspects around and trying to bond with a still stone faced Frey, he finally felt in the mood to give into it again. He didn’t allow himself to think about the implications of the whole thing as he climbed the stairs to his bedroom, stripped off all his clothes and stretched out on the bed. He only wanted to feel, to lose his fucking mind for just a few moments more.</p><p>He ran his hands over his body teasingly at first, getting himself warmed up. He was usually rough and ready for it, but for some reason he felt like taking a little more time tonight. He ran his hands down his chest, brushing his nipples with a deliberate touch. He trailed his fingers over his stomach, tugging lightly at his chest hair along the way. He even scratched his nails over his thighs, idly allowed himself to wonder for half a second about how Frey’s hands would feel on such tender flesh.</p><p>It all felt a little more intense than usual, for some reason, a little more hyped up than just a session of mild foreplay before he got to the main deal. He touched his nipples, and he was already gasping from the sheer sensation of it. He tugged at his chest hair, and his cock was already hard. He scraped his nails up his thighs, and he was surprised to find himself already wet with precome.</p><p>Well, it really had been a while; and an incredibly stressful while at that. He wrapped a hand around himself slowly, pleased that the slickness of his precome made the entire thing a bit easier, and gave himself a slow pump. He kept his grip fairly soft at first, but soon tightened it to the usual almost painful level of pressure. He was already on edge, after all, there was no need to play around.</p><p>Maybe it was the fact that he couldn’t get Frey out of his head, which was making the whole thing so intense. Granted, he’d had Frey in his head while wanking for years now and it had never been this bad… But maybe the fact that he’d actually fucked the man, even if it was just to save the world, made all the difference. He was already trembling helplessly at the end of his first stroke, almost panting as if he’d ran a marathon. He was usually fairly good when it came to stamina, but he already felt like he was falling apart at the seams.</p><p>Usually he took his time, liked stretching things out and seeing just how long he could last, but it didn’t take long before he was downright fucking up into his hand. He remembered how Frey had felt beneath him, clenching hard around him, and before long his desperate groans filled the room. He couldn’t help fantasising about Frey’s arse around him, and about how Frey’s hand and mouth would feel too. They were guilty thoughts, but that didn’t take away from the intensity.</p><p>It was almost as if somebody else, such as Frey, was in the bed with him and sharing his pleasure. Almost as if somebody else was wrapping their hand around his cock. Almost as if Fr- somebody else was pumping their hand up and down his length at the perfect pace to drive him out of his mind. Almost as if <i>Frey</i> was sharing in his pleasure with him, taking great glee in driving him higher and higher. It should’ve been worrying, instead it was one of the most intensely pleasurable sensations that he’d ever experienced.</p><p>He spread his legs on the bed, already close to undone, and thrust desperately up into his hand. He felt his balls draw up closer to his body, his limbs start to tremble, his breath start to catch in his throat. The simple act of wanking off had never felt as good as this before. Strike that, <i>sex</i> had never felt this good before - except for one time, when he had pinned Frey down to a plinth and shoved into him again and again until they had both fallen completely apart.</p><p>It was definitely like Frey was in the bed with him now, the sensation seeming almost real instead of just a desperate fantasy. He could almost feel Frey’s pleasure throbbing all the way through him, could hear Frey’s gasps in his ear and sense the tremble of his limbs as he fell apart in time with him. It was almost like he was right there, just the span of the bed away. Or perhaps just a little further off, lying in his own bed with his own hand wrapped confusedly around his cock…</p><p>The realization, when it came, slammed into him like a fucking steam train.</p><p>He unwound his hand from his cock immediately, fisted the covers hard in his hands and winced as his pleasure ran right into a wall. For a long moment he wasn’t quite sure what to do, but in the end settled for focusing on the bond between them and thinking rather desperately down it. <i>Percy?</i></p><p>There was a long pause, one so long that he genuinely wondered if he was just being an overly paranoid idiot and ruining the one bit of stress relief he’d got in weeks, and then he felt Frey’s mind brush right up against his. <i>Nine Nails?!</i></p><p>There was a long moment of silence. Frey wasn’t in the bed besides him, was in fact actually across town in his own bed with his own hand wrapped around his cock, but he could still sense him; could still almost see the heave of his naked chest, the sweat slicked across his skin, the growing panic in his eyes as he realized what they’d just been doing.</p><p>And then Frey’s mind withdrew all at once, his pleasure cutting off just as sharply, and left him alone. Lying in bed, with a hardly fading hard on between his thighs and his mind abuzz with confused horror.</p><p>--</p><p>Frey arrived at his door about half an hour later, looking decidedly less put together than he usually did. It wasn’t like he’d run through the streets naked, his ever so refined Frey would never do something like that, but his hair was ruffled up into a halo around his head and his clothes had obviously been thrown on in a haphazard manner. There was a little bit of his collarbone showing through the top of his hastily buttoned shirt, and he couldn’t take his eyes off it. Frey noticed him looking, and went the same shade of bright red that he had that day on the mountain.</p><p>“We need,” Frey said breathlessly, and stepped forwards until he had no choice but to yank his eyes up. “To fix this. Right <i>now</i>.”</p><p>“Agreed,” he said, a touch breathlessly, and tried to bury the strange sense of reluctance that’d risen up in his chest at the thought. Judging by the complicated expression on Frey’s face, he managed it nowhere near as well as he wanted.</p><p>--</p><p>
  <b>ii. Sever it with science</b>
</p><p>“I found a Doctor,” Frey had said that night, pacing his study again with a desperation that couldn’t be denied.</p><p>He’d sat back in his chair, feeling unsettled for a thousand reasons at once. Because of what they’d just done, because he was still half hard underneath his trousers, because of his annoyance that Frey would immediately leap to trying to find a scientific solution to a problem caused by magic, because Frey’s desperation to be parted from him cut at something that he wasn’t quite comfortable naming. “What, in between you throwing your clothes back on and coming here?”</p><p>“No, Nine Nails, before that,” Frey had snapped, and had paused to throw a glare in his direction. It had led to a brief break in the panicked pacing, at the very least. Swings and roundabouts. “I told you that I’d still be doing research, and unlike certain people I follow through on my words. I hoped we wouldn’t have to use this option, but here we are.”</p><p>He’d set his jaw stubbornly, blessed the fact that his trousers were just thick enough to hide his erection. He didn’t know when Frey being a snooty bastard had started to turn him on, but it was downright irritating. “I still think that the best way to handle this is going to be through magical means…”</p><p>“Fine, think that,” Frey had said, with a narrowing of his eyes and a flash of irritation that had him tensing in his chair. “But I, at least, am going to see this man. You can either come with me and do something useful with your life for once, or deal with me shoving boring medical terminology into your head from a distance until you snap and come join me anyway.”</p><p>Which led, rather unfortunately, to them sitting in a fancy doctor’s office in Edinburgh university. Him impatiently jiggling his leg as he waited for the egghead before them to pay attention, while Frey attempted to give him a quelling glance from his side. </p><p>Doctor Partridge was a man about the same age as the both of them, and obviously as proud as a peacock to have attained such a high up position. He was perfectly put together, in a boringly academic way, and carried an air of importance around him like a cloak. He was currently wearing an expression of scornful confusion, as if wondering why on earth the two maddest people in Edinburgh were currently bothering him. “So. How can I help you two today?”</p><p>Frey finally dragged his eyes away from him at the words, and he felt a brief flash of hope down the bond. It was more tempting than it should’ve been, he found himself stubbornly biting his tongue to avoid reacting to it. “We’ve recently developed an unfortunate affliction, Doctor, and we were hoping you could help with it.”</p><p>Partridge’s eyes tracked between the two of them, if anything his confused expression only grew more scornful. “What, the both of you?”</p><p>“Yeah, the both of us,” he said. He had no doubt that Partridge was probably very good at what he did, they didn’t give you hoity toity offices if you weren’t after all, but what he did probably didn’t involve two people who had become magically bonded after fucking to save the world. “Do you recall the whole apocalypse thing that happened a few weeks back?”</p><p>“I do recall the earthquakes, yes,” Partridge said in a deliberately calming tone, one obviously designed to put a drama queen firmly in his place. But then the man frowned a little, reached up to adjust his glasses with a ponderous expression. “And that rather intense storm, that just happened to coincide with them…”</p><p>“The apocalypse,” he provided, giving Partridge his most unimpressed look.</p><p>“I know it sounds rather silly, Doctor, but I was there and I can corroborate that it was heading in that direction,” Frey cut in, obviously trying to appear the sane and diplomatic one in this situation and failing utterly. Frey sent him an annoyed sideways glance at the observation, and he smiled beatifically in response. “If the two of us hadn’t stopped it… Well, things would’ve gone rather unfortunately.”</p><p>“I see,” Partridge said, obviously not seeing. He wasn’t even surprised, in his experience even the smartest people could be as blind as a bat when it came to certain matters. “And how exactly did the two of you stop this catastrophe?”</p><p>“We, uh-” Frey started, and very deliberately did not glance over at him. Before he would’ve only seen a faint flush upon Frey’s cheeks, and would’ve probably felt rather amused at his obvious discomposure. Now he felt the full breadth of Frey’s misery and panic, and couldn’t help but feel rather bad about it.</p><p>“Bravely and valiantly, and at great personal cost to ourselves,” he said flatly, intimidatingly, and ignored Frey’s flare of surprise at the sudden defence. He still liked seeing the guy a bit out of sorts, of course, but that didn’t mean that he had to like the thought of him being utterly humiliated. “It doesn’t matter what we did to stop it, what matters is what resulted from what we did to stop it. And what resulted was the two of us becoming unfortunately bound.”</p><p>“Bound?” Partridge asked, significantly more politely than before. Hah, and Frey insisted that intimidation tactics didn’t work.</p><p>“On a metaphysical level, let us say,” Frey said, and sent him a sideways glare. “Ever since we saved the world, which still sounds ridiculous I know, we’ve been able to hear each other’s thoughts and feel each other’s emotions. And, as you can probably expect, it’s started to get rather in the way of us doing our work.”</p><p>“As paranormal investigators?” Partridge said, still just about politely.</p><p>“As policemen,” he replied, putting just the slightest bit of a snarl into his words. He didn’t particularly mind people looking down on him, as far as he was concerned it just showed him who he should avoid, but he was damned if he was going to let anybody look down on Frey. Not when this whole shitshow was going on, at any rate.</p><p>“Right,” Partridge said, hastily backtracking yet again, and drew himself up behind his desk. He was wearing a deliberately professional expression, one almost as provoking as Frey’s perennial ‘I am a serious policeman doing serious things’ expression. “I have ample sympathy for you two gentleman, and the unfortunate affliction that you’re dealing with, but I’m still not entirely sure why you’re coming to me with this problem.”</p><p>“You’re a world renowned surgeon. An expert in separating things, if you will,” Frey said, and deliberately ignored his amusement at those words. “We were hoping that you could help us out with our, ah, metaphysical problem.”</p><p>Partridge cast a wary glance his way for a moment, as if wondering exactly how close to the line of decency he could skirt before being pulled up on it. “I can understand your point of view, Mr Frey, but I am an expert in the body and not the mind. I do wish to help, I really do, but I’m not entirely sure-”</p><p>Frey sagged a little in his seat, despair echoing clearly through their bond yet again. He made sure that Frey wasn’t looking, was instead staring sadly at his hands, before fixing Partridge with a glare so venomous that several suspects had spontaneously handed themselves into custody at the very sight of it.</p><p>“-But, then, I suppose medicine is an arena for exploring things that we’re unsure about,” Partridge said, almost smoothly, and gave Frey a tolerant smile as his head popped back up with an expression of surprise. “I suppose I could try to help. For an appropriate fee, of course.”</p><p>“I’m willing to pay,” Frey said bluntly, desperate in a way that made him shift uncomfortably in his chair for reasons that he couldn’t quite put a finger on. “Anything you want. Please, just <i>fix</i> this.”</p><p>“There are various non-intrusive methods we could try, which in my opinion - even as a surgeon - would be far better than a potentially traumatic surgery,” Partridge said, keeping his tone deliberately businesslike even as his eyes flashed with alarm. “We could try exposure therapy, keeping the two of you together until whatever ails you wears off. Or, on the flipside of that, we could try and see if distance cures this; just keeping the two of you apart until the bond breaks. We could try distraction therapy, giving the two of you be- different things to do until you forget what lies between you entirely…”</p><p>“We’ve tried that,” he interrupted flatly, knowing that Partridge was just trying to be helpful - albeit only for the sake of keeping his neck intact - but hating it more and more by the moment. “It didn’t work.”</p><p>“Interesting,” Partridge said, quite obviously finding it anything but. He couldn't even really blame him, as much as he desperately wanted to blame somebody. “Still might be worth keeping in mind, in case we can do it in a slightly different way. If none of those work we can try more intrusive methods. Surgery on the brain, or on the heart, or on… Well, I’m sure we can perform surgery on some other areas if needed. It’ll be a big process, and I definitely wouldn’t recommend it as a first option, but it might be worth giving some thought.”</p><p>They both stared at him silently. Frey undeniably eager and hopeful, flashing bright down the bond, and him increasingly irritated. </p><p>“Failing that, there are further options still!” Partridge said optimistically, obviously having no clue what to do with such a strange atmosphere. He’d almost feel sorry for the guy, if he wasn’t feeling so decidedly out of sorts with this entire situation. “I could try to liaise with my more… Ah, metaphysical colleagues to see if we can come up with a joint plan of treatment. There’s a nice asylum just outside of Edinburgh, I’m sure that you’ve heard of it. If they’d allow me to look at a few files there, I’m sure I could come up with something.”</p><p><i>Ah</i>.</p><p>He felt a brief flash of horror echo down the bond, Frey obviously realizing what he’d known all along, and suddenly he was violently and absolutely done with this entire situation. He ross to his feet in one smooth moment, knocking over his chair behind him, and hesitated for only a moment before grabbing the edge of Partridge’s fancy table and flipping it over. The squeak of horror that the man gave as all his papers tumbled to the floor wasn't much of a salve, but it’d do.</p><p>“We’re done here,” he said to the both of them, turned on his heel and left. Frey’s emotions trailed him all the way out, and the clear guilt only made him feel so much worse.</p><p>--</p><p>
  <b>iii. Sever it with magic</b>
</p><p>“We’ve tried your way-” He’d said the moment that Frey had caught up with him, more furious than he’d been in a while and also a great deal more shaky.</p><p>Frey had frowned at him ferociously, but it’d lacked its usual venom. He could still feel the guilt throbbing down the bond, the sense of reluctant regret for having dragged him into such a humiliating situation. Perhaps, as strange as it seemed, he wasn’t the only one who felt some protective stirrings in this relationship. “I will remind you, Nine Nails, that we <i>barely</i> tried my way.”</p><p>He had ignored that, Frey being a sniffy dick and the confusion both, in favour of pinching his nose for a long moment. And then he had grabbed Frey’s arm, startling only briefly this time at the mirrored feeling of a hand closing around his own flesh, and started to tow him along despite his numerous protests. “Now let’s try <i>mine</i>.”</p><p>Luisa Fernandez Du Una, one of Katerina’s apprentices when she’d still been a semi respected figure within the city, lived just a few blocks away from where Katerina had once had her stomping ground. She didn’t live in the best area, or even the best building in that area, but it was clean and cozy and Luisa herself looked only the slightest bit careworn. She even greeted the both of them with a fairly cheery smile, as she guided them into her flat and across to some lumpy looking chairs.</p><p>He genuinely hadn't expected Frey to actually come along with him, he wouldn’t even have blamed him all that much if he’d stamped off to sulk for the rest of the day, but there he was sitting besides him with a downright mutinous expression on his face. He tentatively probed the bond, and was slightly startled to realize that Frey genuinely felt guilty about what’d happened in Partridge’s office. That, with the addition of lingering desperation, was the main reason why he’d reluctantly followed him yet again.</p><p>“So,” Luisa said in a cheery tone after they’d made their introductions, deliberately hyping up her usually slight spanish accent in a move he suspected was automatic by now. “How can I help?”</p><p>It was his job to lead here, even if Frey had dragged himself along semi-willingly. He smiled at Luisa, and tried not to make it look too pleading. “Do you remember that apocalypse business a few weeks back?”</p><p>Luisa made a face. Of course she did, she lived in one of the poorer areas and the destruction there - considering the shoddy architecture, houses built out of inferior material and far too close together - had been so much worse than in all the posher districts. “Rather hard to forget. I almost got my head taken off by a falling stone.”</p><p>“It’s so nice to meet somebody who knows how to respond appropriately to these situations,” he said, and slid a pointed sideways glance over at Frey. Frey, after a moment, raised his head and glared back at him and they were able to share a reassuring moment of mutual frustration. “We were the ones that managed to stop it - in ways that aren’t entirely important, so don’t inquire about them - but we’ve been left with some rather unfortunate side effects as a result.”</p><p>“I see,” Luisa said, and looked professionally interested instead of incredulous. It really was nice, to finally be taking steps toward sorting this situation. “What side effects has it led to?”</p><p>He opened his mouth for a moment, preparing to respond, and then hesitated and glanced at Frey again. The bond didn’t entirely work in a useful way, it wasn’t like they could reliably communicate mind to mind or anything, but it worked well enough. Their eyes met, and then held for a long moment. He allowed himself to feel gently curious, as encouraging as he could possibly manage in that moment. Frey in response felt decidedly irritated for a moment, and then resigned.</p><p>“We’re in each other’s heads all the time.” It wasn’t quite a surprise when Frey finally spoke again, which was somewhat of a surprise in itself. Maybe, just maybe, they weren’t completely awful at dealing with each other. “By which i mean that we hear each other’s thoughts, feel each other’s emotions and sometimes find our physical sensations… Mirrored.”</p><p>There were a thousand ways that last part could’ve been taken, but Luisa was a professional and so hardly inclined to let her assumptions play out across her face. She nodded politely instead, and made a softly thoughtful noise. “Not inquiring as to how exactly you saved the world at all-”</p><p>“Very sensible,” he said approvingly, as he felt Frey blush besides him.</p><p>“But did you do anything intimate near any kind of runes at any point?” She asked, looking between the two of them not with speculation - though he heard a flash of thought from Frey’s direction worrying about such a thing - but with open curiosity. “You know, emotionally intimate. Something that could’ve led to a deepening of the relationship between the two of you?”</p><p>There was a long moment of incredibly awkward silence. He knew for a fact, because he was privy to both of their thoughts, that they were both remembering exactly the same thing. How intimate it had been to kiss each other at last, how intimate it had been to see each other naked, how intimate it had been to have his mouth on Frey’s arse and then his fingers inside Frey’s arse, how intimate it had been to push his cock inside Frey again and again until he had sobbed and shuddered and come all over the both of them.</p><p>He cleared his throat, just as Luisa was starting to look sympathetically awkward. Spared another sideways glance at Frey, and then made his decision. “You could say that, aye.”</p><p>Frey startled up besides him, an expression of pure rage on his face and humiliation throbbing strongly underneath. “Nine Nails-!”</p><p>“There’s no point in denying it, Percy,” he said, as apologetically as he could considering the circumstances. He tried to send soothing thoughts through the bond, but genuinely wasn’t sure how well he succeeded. “Saving the world together does tend to create a certain kind of emotional bond.”</p><p>Luisa made a thoughtful noise again, as they stared intensely at each other, and gave an almost pleased nod. Great, at least somebody was pleased with the situation. “I think I know what’s going on here.”</p><p>“Oh, good,” Frey said, his voice heavy with sarcasm, and finally tore his eyes away from him in favour of glaring at Luisa. “Enlighten us with your magical ways.”</p><p>“I think what’s happening here is a soulbond,” Luisa explained, hardly ruffled by his bad temper. Maybe Katerina had trained her in that too, had warned her about an absurd english bastard with a stick so far up his arse that it was nudged somewhere up around his lungs. “You were emotionally intimate with each other, bared in a way that neither of you have ever been before, in an atmosphere of high magic and it twisted your souls together. It’s incredibly rare, especially these days, but there are many cases of it in literature.”</p><p>He already knew most of that, but he found himself fascinated anyway. It was somewhat soothing to know that this was an actual thing, that it wasn’t all in their fucking heads. “Interesting.”</p><p>“I don’t care what it is, or how interesting it may be,” Frey said through gritted teeth, obviously not feeling the same way. Through the bond - the magically diagnosed bond, thank you very much - he felt that same old throb of desperation. “All I care about is knowing if it can be fixed.”</p><p>Luisa hesitated for a long moment, looking uncertain for the first time since they’d barged into her rooms. “Well…”</p><p>Frey blinked incredulously, he felt the shock of it right through the bond, and then leaned forward. He didn’t look particularly threatening, he wasn’t often in the habit of that, but the expression of pure rage on his face was hard to miss even if you weren’t soulbonded to him. “You <i>cannot</i> be serious.”</p><p>“I am, admittedly, not an absolute expert in this. Madame Katerina left before I could fully complete my education, and this was not an area that she covered in any particular detail…” Luisa held up her hands apologetically, glancing between the two of them again. He didn’t know what his face displayed at Frey’s obvious dismay - his obvious unwillingness to be bound to him in any way - but he doubted it was pretty. “I am not entirely sure that this is the kind of thing that can be fixed, or even should be fixed, but I could most definitely be wrong. I can try and figure out some plans if you want me to, to do a bit more research and see if anything <i>can</i> be done for the two of you.”</p><p>He took another quick look at Frey, saw the man looking back at him with a complicated expression and immediately looked away. He knew his own emotions on the subject were probably extremely obvious through the bond, but that didn’t mean that he wanted to throw them around everywhere. “We’d appreciate it, Lassie.”</p><p>It’d been the wrong thing to say, not so much for Luisa’s sake - who seemed blissfully oblivious to the meaning of the word - but for their sakes. Frey sucked in a deep breath besides him, and he didn’t even need the bond to know that their minds had both flashed back to what they’d done to save the world. To him gasping “lassie” so tenderly into Frey’s ear, and to Frey falling apart completely at the sound.</p><p>“Excellent, I definitely have a few books on the subject…” Luisa was continuing, mercifully unaware of the fact that they were both barely aware of her. Couldn’t be aware of her, considering how caught up in each other they were. “I’ll look into them. And, until I’ve done that, I have a few other ideas that maybe you could use as a stopgap. Iron, for instance, is very good at dispelling supernatural energy; it mainly works for driving away ghosts, but it is possible…”</p><p>For a moment, a painfully hopeful moment, he thought that maybe Frey would just stay in place and let the words wash over him as he gave in to the force of the bond. But then he felt a flash of pure frustration echo through him, and wasn’t even surprised when Frey let out a wordlessly frustrated noise and pushed to his feet. “This is pointless.”</p><p>Luisa blinked up at him, again seeming a touch discombobulated. He couldn’t blame her, even he felt that far too often around Frey. “Um-”</p><p>“I should’ve known that one of McGray’s ridiculous quacks would hold no ability to solve a situation as complex as this, I should’ve known better than to even hope,” Frey said scornfully, looking snobbier than he ever had. It was only the bond between them that allowed him to feel how hurt Frey was, how utterly and terrifiedly despairing. “I’ll show myself out. I would wish both of you a good day, but I don’t think that either of you deserve it.”</p><p>The pain in Frey’s chest was too intense to ignore. He found himself reaching out without really thinking, wrapping his hand around Frey’s arm and not even flinching at the mirrored feeling of it this time. “Percy-”</p><p>There was a flare of complicated sensation all through the bond, one that wanted to be rage but was so very complicated, and Frey sucked in a deep breath and yanked his arm away. When he looked at his face he only saw rage there, when he attempted to sense anything through the bond he only got sadness and profound confusion. “Fuck off.”</p><p>And with that dismissal, angrier than usual by a country mile, Frey turned on his heel and marched out of the office like a toddler having a tantrum. Leaving him and Luisa to stare at each other, the both of them wide eyed and faintly awkward in the aftermath.</p><p>Luisa cleared her throat eventually, and leant forward to give him a concerned look. To his surprise, he quickly realised that it wasn’t entirely on his behalf. “What did you <i>do</i> to each other?”</p><p>“Something completely awful, apparently,” he said, a great deal more weakly than ever before, and got to his feet. He tossed rather too much money on the table for a simple consultation, but it was rather hard to care about that with Frey’s confused misery still echoing down the bond between them. “Something for your trouble, and apologies for the mess. I’ll go make sure that he’s alright.”</p><p>--</p><p>“Percy!” He’d yelled, as he’d just about managed to catch up to Frey despite how fast he was going. “<i>Percy</i>, for fuck’s sake listen to me when I’m-”</p><p>“Listen to <i>what</i>, Nine Nails?” Frey had asked, low and deadly, and spun around to face him with a look of pure rage in his eyes. Which would’ve been fine, he could’ve dealt with that quite easily, if it wasn’t for the pulse of pure emotion that came down the bond with it. “More of your fucking quackery, when we should be focusing on more important things?”</p><p>He’d come to a halt, stared at Frey almost imploringly. He’d known that Frey could probably feel how hurt he was down the bond just as surely as he could feel Frey’s confusion, and was well aware that that probably made the situation no better. “I’m only trying to help you.”</p><p>Frey had tilted his head back, his eyes narrowing. And he got a pulse of knowledge down the bond, a split second warning, just before he spoke again. “What, like you were trying to help me in that cave?”</p><p>“<i>Yes</i>, if you’re going to put it like that,” he’d said, practically spluttered, and had himself been surprised at just how hurt he felt. God, he knew very well that they weren’t even friends but to have their coupling - both the best and worst moment of his life all at once - thrown back in his face like that… “I’m sorry that you were forced to debase yourself with somebody you hate, but neither of us had any choice. There’s no fucking point in taking your feelings about this entire shitshow out on me, lassie!”</p><p>The lassie had been a mistake, yet again, but in that moment he hadn’t been able to regret it. Frey had taken a step backwards, as if he’d been struck, and then had glared at him with even more venom - even more genuine hurt, pulsing surely down the bond like a poison - than before. “Well, I have a choice now. And, guess what, I’m using it to walk away from you and this entire fucking situation.”</p><p>He had scowled at that, but again hadn’t been able to hide his hurt. He wasn’t quite sure when what Frey thought had actually started to matter, but with the bond swirling between them he wasn’t exactly able to hide that fact anymore. “Percy, please-”</p><p>“<i>No</i>!” Frey had practically shouted in his face. And then, hardly calmer. “No. Stop trying to talk to me, stop trying to soothe me, stop trying to help me, just <i>stop</i>. My life has been a mess ever since I met you, Nine Nails, and it’s all your fault. I wish I had never ever come to Edinburgh, never seen your face. My life would’ve been a lot fucking better if that had been the case.”</p><p>It had been like, to be dramatic about it, getting stabbed in the back. He had taken a step backwards, staggered, and Frey had shot him one last venomous glance before turning on his heel and disappearing. The fact that he felt just as devastated, just as undone by this thing between them, hardly made things any better.</p><p>He had felt awful for hours after their confrontation, wretched in a way that he'd promised himself that he would never feel again after his parents had died and his entire life had gone to shit. But sat in his later, all alone in his library with only a bottle of whisky beside him, anger had become the emotion forefront in his mind.</p><p>For years they’d been pretending that they didn’t like each other, that they were little more than enemies who were forced to share an office and a life. He pretended that he found Frey only a prissy nightmare, a stuffy English Lass who was too busy primping himself in a mirror to pay any attention to the world around him. Frey, in turn, pretended that he was only a Scottish savage barely capable of speech and not at all capable of logical thought. It was an arrangement that had worked, in its own way.</p><p>But it wasn’t true. He <i>liked</i> Frey, more than he’d liked anybody who wasn’t family in a long time. They’d drank whisky together, they’d solved numerous cases with each other’s help, they’d gone chasing all over Scotland - and a great deal of England - with only each other for company. He had seen Frey lose one of the few family members he cared about in the most brutal way possible, Frey had seen him lose Katerina and almost be reduced to rock bottom yet again. They had <i>fucked</i> each other in the most desperate and raw of ways. They had been everything to each other, in one way or another, more times than he could count.</p><p><i>Fuck</i> it. He was tired of pretending, just for the sake of a few hours more peace.</p><p>He slammed his glass of whisky, only half drunk in his brooding, down on the side and fully opened up his emotions to Frey again. He felt the by now familiar surge of desperation, and confusion, and a strangely potent hope underneath it all… And he let Frey feel all of his emotions in turn. The frustration, the hurt, the bubbling affection that he just couldn’t cut out no matter how hard he tried.</p><p>And then he stood up, braced himself on his desk and undid his trousers. And, not even giving Frey a second to get up to speed with what was going on, shoved his hand down them and wrapped it around his cock.</p><p>The position wasn’t the most comfortable, but that was hardly the point in this kind of situation. He didn’t need to be comfortable, to hide his head in the sand again and again and a-fucking-<i>gain</i>; he wanted to be raw, he wanted Frey to face up to this wildfire thing between them that they’d both been denying for so very long. He held himself for a moment, making sure to tighten his hand almost to the point of pain, and then started to roughly pump himself as he braced on his desk.</p><p>The main emotion he was getting from Frey at the moment, from where he was presumably sequestered away in his hoity toity house with his hoity toity butler to tend to him, was confusion. There was a little bit of scandalised shock, of course, but mainly he still seemed to be getting up to speed. He obviously hadn’t expected him to go quite this far, to actually shove his hand down his trousers even when he knew about the bond that they shared.</p><p>Unfortunately for Frey, his prissy English Lass he thought with a touch of venom, he was willing to go a great deal further than that. He started pumping himself roughly, not holding back even a little bit. He had never been much of a fan of foreplay, when it came to his own hand, and he was even less in the mood for it in this situation than usual. He set a brutal pace from out of the gate, grunted desperately as he braced one hand on his desk and used the other to wank himself practically raw.</p><p>Frey was definitely scandalised now, a decided sense of disapproval coming through the bond from him. He didn’t focus enough to send actual thoughts through, but he obviously assumed that he didn’t need to. He seemed to think that the force of his disapproval would be enough, that in the face of it he would realize that his current plan was absolutely insane and withdraw to attempt to save even the tiniest bit of face.</p><p>Poor Lass, it was like he didn’t know him at all even with the soulbond. He acknowledged the disapproval, but only used it to drive himself higher. He imagined Frey sitting right across from him, in this room with him, and wearing that expression of snooty disapproval clear on his face. He imagined touching himself anyway in the face of it, thrusting into his hand again and again until Frey’s eyes went wide and his pale skin flushed red. And then he would move even closer still, would shift away from his desk and go to stand over his prissy English lass instead.</p><p>He expected Frey to be even more scandalised at that, angry and offended enough that it would take his breath away, but… He wasn’t. There was a moment of flaring offence down the bond, yes, but it soon faded away. And then open curiosity took its place, so vivid that he could half imagine Frey sitting there and staring at him with that look he got in his eyes only when he was unravelling something in his mind.</p><p>That gave him a moment of pause in a way that no other reaction, save perhaps incredulous laughter, would’ve. But it was only a moment, the intermixed anger and arousal would allow him no longer than that. He braced himself against the desk for a long moment more, and then actually shifted away and walked painfully over to the chair that Frey usually sat in when he was over. He leant over it, braced one hand on the arm and started to wank himself off again. He imagined moving his hand over his cock just a few bare inches away from Frey’s face, imagined how his eyes would go wide and his expression would go reluctantly hungry. </p><p>The image was so vivid that he could practically hear Frey’s startled moan on the air, and the imagined sound of it sent an extra surge of pleasure right through him. It was so disarming that it took him a moment to realize that it hadn’t been entirely his own pleasure, that Frey - his prissy Lass who sometimes looked like he didn’t even know what to do with his own cock - had started to get involved in this process too.</p><p>For a moment he was so shocked that he actually stopped, his hand clenching almost too hard around his cock as he froze. To think that this wasn’t just some gotcha to get back at Frey, to think that this was actually something he was participating in…</p><p>It was almost too much, but then Frey’s mind brushed up against his insistently again and he found himself abandoning his reservations as easily as that. He took in a deep breath, and then ran his fingers over the head of his cock to gather up some extra slick and started wanking himself off again. He went even faster than before this time, unexpectedly unleashed by the knowledge that he wasn’t just doing this for himself.</p><p>It was all so much more intense, to do this consciously. It was almost like having somebody else in the room with him. No, almost like having Frey in the room with him. No, definitely like having Frey actually in his head with him. He felt his own hand close around his cock, and also felt Frey fumble with the fastenings of his trousers. He felt the brush of his callouses over tender skin, and also felt Frey’s far softer palm wrapped around his cock. He felt a moan vibrate loud through his chest, and felt Frey’s answering whimper just as surely. He felt <i>everything</i>.</p><p>This was supposed to be a form of revenge, another vicious blow in this apparently eternal fight that they were in, but it wasn’t. Maybe it never had been about revenge between them, maybe they never had been fighting but rather moving inevitably towards this kind of pleasure. He didn’t know anymore, and it all seemed rather too much effort to think about now. He bent even further over the chair, hunched with too much pleasure flowing through him at once, and started to fuck desperately into his hand instead of just pumping it on his cock.</p><p>He imagined that he was thrusting into Frey’s body again, that they were back on the plinth where they belonged, and again felt Frey’s vibrating whimper as he absorbed that fantasy. He didn’t know exactly where Frey was, but he was getting images of a shadowed bedroom - of Frey lying on his bed, with his legs spread and his hand moving desperately on his cock. He felt the coolness of sheets against heated skin, he felt the prickle of sweat all over Frey’s body, he felt them both falling more and more apart by the second. </p><p>It was glorious. Maybe not quite as glorious as when he’d had Frey in that cave, because Frey wasn’t right here with him to share intimately in his pleasure, but still so much better than any other sex that he’d had. He abandoned himself to it fully, closed his eyes and tightened his grip and stroked and stroked until he felt the edge rushing up on him surely and steadily. He hadn’t felt this undone in weeks, and it felt exactly like coming home.</p><p>Frey felt utterly undone too, and was a great deal less irritated about that than he ever would’ve expected. The man was usually so prissy, so caught up in his ideas of what he should be doing as opposed to what he wanted to do, but unleashed he was something entirely different. Something wild, and raw, and so beautiful that his breath caught even at the very thought of him. How had he ever been allowed so close to somebody like Frey? How had he ever been allowed to touch such a contradiction, so many spikes layered over such passion, and hold it for his own? <i>How</i>?</p><p>It was that thought, the impossibility of it, that sent him tumbling right over the edge. He let out a muffled bellow, one that made him decidedly glad that nobody else in the house was much inclined to obsess over each other's business, and spent all over Frey’s usual chair. It was more intense than almost any other orgasm that he’d had before, it emptied him out and left him slumping towards the floor as he tried to catch his breath.</p><p>And then Frey tipped over the edge right after him, with a cry that he actually heard through the bond, and it was like having a second orgasm right after the first. He slumped actually to the floor at that, his knees completely giving way as the air was knocked right out of him. All he could do was curl into himself, feel the pleasure pulse right through him and wonder at the intensity of it all. The intensity of <i>them</i>.</p><p>He came back to himself only in slow increments, only as Frey slowly returned to his own head. He found himself on his knees, his cock still out of his trousers and his chin resting on a chair that was now covered in come. It crossed his mind, and crossed from his mind into Frey’s mind, that Frey would never be able to visit him again without the both of them thinking of this moment; him brought to his knees, staring at a formerly pristine red chair now streaked with white.</p><p>He felt worn out, and shocked, and confused in a way so profound that he genuinely wasn’t sure where to go from here. He could still feel Frey’s mind against his; could feel weariness, and shock, and a steadily rising panic like he hadn’t ever meant to reveal quite so much of himself or get quite so carried away.</p><p>Ah well, in for a penny in for a pound. It wasn’t like he could make this situation any worse than it already was. He reached out in a businesslike manner, swiped up some of his come from the seat of the chair and stuck his fingers deliberately in his mouth. He made sure to share the taste of it with Frey as he held it on his tongue for a moment and then swallowed, made sure to fix every single moment of it in his head so Frey could share in the experience.</p><p>He felt a brief flare of shock from Frey, then a far more lengthy flare of heat, then a return of the confusion that had plagued them both for so long. It was something, it was probably all he was going to get. He rested his head carefully on the chair beneath him, closed his eyes for a long moment and reluctantly focused on putting himself back together.</p><p>--</p><p>
  <b>iv. Death</b>
</p><p>Which was all well and good, better than good in some ways, except that it left the following morning for the both of them to deal with.</p><p>He had decided, quite sensibly considering literally everything, to return to burying his head in the sand and ignoring the situation as much as possible. He had to sneak into the office to get some papers, but otherwise he had no other plans; he could just pop in without seeing anyone, and pop out again with nobody the wiser…</p><p>Which was all well and good, until it became violently clear that Frey had had exactly the same idea - down to the timing - and they literally bumped into each other as he was sneaking out and Frey was sneaking in.</p><p>“Uh,” he said, and felt himself blush for perhaps the first time in decades. It wasn’t like he hadn’t done morning afters before, it wasn’t even like he’d never had a morning after with Frey before, but somehow this felt significantly more awkward than all those other times. “Hi.”</p><p>Frey was also blushing, in his usual alarmingly pretty way. They were both vividly remembering last night, and also both vividly remembering the first time they’d awkwardly exchanged words after what they’d done on the mountain. He genuinely wasn’t sure which memory was worse, both kind of made him want to go find the nearest window and leap out of it. “Hello.”</p><p>They settled into a long moment of awkward staring, before he decided that he might as well follow through with his plan even if it was with far less dignity than ideal. He gathered his papers to his chest, gathered his coat defensively around him and headed towards the door. No need to dwell on this awkward thing between them, no need to dwell on the memories of Frey’s awkwardness or Frey’s willingness or the little helpless gasps that Frey gave when he was entirely carried away by pleasure.</p><p>It, the vivid and deliberate denial, was all going a lot better than expected. Right until Frey hesitated for a moment, and then reached out to tightly grab his arm. “McGray-”</p><p>He froze solid, genuinely not sure what to do with the fact of Frey actually choosing to touch him. He glanced back, automatically reaching down the bond as he did so, and saw an expression of tentative determination on Frey’s face. “What?”</p><p>Frey stared at him for a long and uncertain moment, and then obviously girded his loins. And, jesus, he should <i>not</i> be thinking about Frey’s loins in this kind of situation. “About yesterday-”</p><p>He was shocked, so shocked that ‘shocked’ hardly seemed a big enough word for the emotion he was feeling. He abandoned his attempt to leave, and took a slow step closer to Frey instead. He could feel his emotions, echoing down the bond, but they were all too confused and jumbled for him to make any sense of. “I thought you wouldn’t want to talk about it. Y’know, <i>ever</i>.”</p><p>“Not that part,” Frey said hastily, but the blush on his cheeks and the tentative longing echoing down the bond told a completely different story. “But, uh, I just thought-”</p><p>He should let Frey unravel this in his own time, if he was sensible. He should maybe, if he was going to be completely and utterly sane about it, even take a step back from this situation altogether and accept that pining for a repressed English Lass was going to do nobody any good. Instead he stepped even closer to Frey, until their bodies were practically pressed together and he could feel his breath against his lips. “Are you absolutely and completely sure… Lassie?”</p><p>Frey snapped his mouth shut, but the flush remained on his cheeks and it most certainly wasn’t an angry one. They stared at each other for a long moment, helplessly. He wondered what Frey would do if he bent his head to kiss him again, as he hadn’t done since the day they’d saved the world, and he knew that Frey was wondering that too.</p><p>All of that considered, it was somewhat of an anticlimax when - in the very next moment - a junior policeman charged down the stairs and burst into the room without bothering to knock. “Inspector Frey, sir! We’ve caught sight of one of the suspects you identified!”</p><p>It was a mercy, even if he wanted to strangle the boy with his bare hands or - even better - throw him out of the room by the scruff of his neck and bend Frey over one of their desks. Instead they stepped apart very hastily, turned to the boy perfectly in time and got back to work with only the briefest thought on what would’ve happened if nobody had interrupted.</p><p>Having a suspect in their sights was important, even if it seemed a good deal less important than whatever was between him and Frey at the moment, and they immediately focused in on it. They jogged up the stairs, out of the station and in the direction that the boy had hastily indicated. They didn’t bother waiting for back up, didn’t even pause to consider what the best plan would be. This was important, this was finally a lead, and neither of them were going to waste it.</p><p>All the way there, in a faintly helpless way, he thought about Frey. Thought about the way that he’d bent Frey over in the cave, the way his body had felt beneath him as he’d slid in again and again. Thought about the way that Frey had been last night, initially so confused but then so very undone. Thought about the way that Frey had been in the office just now, the longing downright screaming down the bond and the way that Frey would’ve probably let him kiss him if they’d had just a few more moments alone together.</p><p>To tell truth he wasn’t paying much attention to anything other than that. So he had nobody else to blame, when he rounded a corner a little too quickly and saw the suspect - or the man he presumed to be the subject - pointing a gun right at his chest. He hesitated for a moment too long, his thoughts still lingering on Frey right behind him, and then there was only a sharp pain and the sensation of falling.</p><p>“McGray!” He heard Frey downright scream, desperate in a way he hadn’t heard him since his uncle had died. And then the world went dark.</p><p>--</p><p>He awoke very slowly from psychedelic dreams of Frey, a thousand swirling thoughts and emotions all topped by big brown eyes staring at him in an attitude of despair. He felt groggier than he ever had, even in the days where he’d taken to knocking himself out with far too much whisky because it was the only way he’d get even an hour of rest, and genuinely wasn’t sure whether he was about to throw up or just remain in a prone position for the rest of his life.</p><p>The only mercy was that Frey was actually leaning over him, actually staring down at him with wide and faintly panicked eyes. It was nice, to have him quite so close, but somewhat confusing. He had never thought that Frey would ever get so close to him again, let alone panic over him, after what’d happened last night...</p><p>The memories of what’d happened, both his and Frey’s, slammed into him like a train. He remembered turning a corner only to feel a sharp pain in his chest, as Frey remembered seeing a bullet slam right into him and his collapse to the ground a moment later. Jesus Christ, he should've been dead. The bullet had hit him right in the chest and plunged through his ribcage, up through his lung and straight into his heart. He shouldn’t even be breathing, let alone feeling grumpy about an unexpected hangover. </p><p>But he wasn't. Thanks, he sensed, to Frey.</p><p>“What-?” He asked, and winced as his voice emerged ragged instead of strident. He was alive, obviously, but well was seemingly a little much to hope for.</p><p>“He shot you,” Frey explained, and then gave a faintly nervous laugh. He’d never heard him laugh in such a way before, hadn’t seen him this discombobulated since he’d seen his uncle die right in front of him. “I mean, you probably gathered that - but he shot you, you collapsed and then you just laid face down on the ground for far too long.”</p><p>That sounded unpleasant, he was faintly glad that he hadn’t been there to witness it. “Was I dead?”</p><p>“No, not quite. But-” Frey attempted to ground himself with a deep breath. From the looks of him it didn’t work, from the feel of him through the bond it most definitely didn’t work. “I felt you dying. I felt you become cold, and then unconscious, and then steadily colder. I felt <i>something</i> starting to leave you, I’m not sure if it was your soul or your consciousness or just your bloody mindedness… But it was most definitely something.”</p><p>That was a lot to deal with, but he got the impression that Frey was dealing with even more. He tentatively stretched out his hand, mildly surprised when it didn’t cause him any undue pain, and wrapped it briefly around Frey’s elbow. “But I didn’t.”</p><p>“<i>Just</i>,” Frey spat, but the attempt at a soothing touch seemed - against all odds - to help him. He smiled down at him reluctantly, seeming at least a little like himself for the first time since he’d woken up again. “Just like you, to be a massively indecisive drama queen about the whole thing. Other people can die quietly, troubling nobody else in the process, but <i>no</i>. Nine Nails McGray can’t possibly go for anything as simple as that.”</p><p>“You’re the indecisive one, la- Percy,” he said, smiling encouragingly, and tentatively attempted to go up on his elbows. It went a lot better, and a lot less painlessly, than expected. “What did you do?”</p><p>“Well, I shot the suspect so he wouldn’t run away. He’s fine, apart from the bullet holes, but he won’t be moving for a while,” Frey answered, which was a great deal less coherent than his usual reports after a crime but he supposed he could cut him a little slack. “He’s with Trevelyan now, and I’m assured that he’ll make a full recovery. We can question him later, as soon as you feel well enough.”</p><p>“Percy-” he started, softly.</p><p>“Interestingly, he looked like one of the servants I remember from the Koloman house,” Frey continued over him, knowing exactly the direction he was pushing in and averting his eyes like some blushing maiden in response. “It seems like they might be involved in this whole affair. Which is hardly that much of a surprise, considering, but-”</p><p>“<i>Percy</i>,” he said even more firmly, and even dared to extend a bit of determination down the bond. It worked, just about, Frey ground to a halt and sent him an oddly tentative sideways glance. “I didn’t mean that, and I know you know it.”</p><p>“I know nothing,” Frey said loftily, even though he could tell through the bond that Frey knew exactly what he was getting at and exactly where he was going to go next. Their days of lying to each other were obviously over, and he minded that a great deal less than he ever thought he would. “What on earth did you mean, then?”</p><p>“I meant,” he started, and then hesitated for just a second before sitting up fully. So he was right in Frey’s space instead of just lying beneath him, so close that they were practically sharing each other’s air. “What did you do to save <i>me</i>?”</p><p>They stared at each other for a long moment from close up, closer than they’d been since they’d come together in the cave. Both of them were a great deal more on edge than they usually were, and a great deal more uncertain. He was tired, and faintly stunned, and ached in ways that weren’t physical but that went incredibly deep anyway. Frey was equally tired, and still panicked, and so relieved that the intensity of it took his breath away.</p><p>“It was the soulbond, I think,” Frey was the one to speak first, eventually. Every moment he expected him to avert his eyes, to hide from this thing between them, and every moment he kept unexpectedly meeting his gaze. “Or whatever totally scientific phenomenon this thing between us actually is. I could feel you dying, and I couldn’t bear the thought of you being gone. I shot him, so he couldn’t flee and get away with what he’d done, and then I immediately went to you. I remembered how we’d dragged the world back, right from the brink, and thought about how you didn’t deserve to die after that. And then-”</p><p>Suddenly everything was becoming clear to him, so clear that he felt his breath catch in his lungs at the mere thought of what Frey had done. “You called me back.”</p><p>The dreams from just a few minutes ago, from when he’d been dying, were already indistinct. But with his new realizations, the lingering shapes of them started to make considerably more sense. He had dreamed of Frey; Frey looking at him, Frey caring for him, Frey calling him back from the brink with naked desperation in his voice.</p><p>“I did,” Frey confirmed, his voice far softer than it usually was, and watched him closely as if not entirely sure what his reaction would be. “I turned you over, placed my hands on your chest and called for you. I wasn’t expecting anything good, was mainly expecting to lose yet another person that I- have spent time with, but it was like there was a thread stretching out between us. And I grabbed the end of that thread, and I pulled on it until you came back to me.”</p><p>The rawness in Frey’s voice was something that he’d never heard before, the rawness in his heart something that he’d never dreamed to feel. He hesitated for a long second, and then shifted closer still; briefly pressed their foreheads together, in a gesture of intimacy that they’d earned by this point. “Guess this bond is good for something after all.”</p><p>Frey remained leant against him for only a moment before he hastily drew himself back, but it was still a moment longer than he’d expected. It was still, in a strange and obscure way, absolutely everything. “I suppose so. Please don’t look too smug.”</p><p>“Would I ever?” He asked, and thought deeply about all the many paths they could take from here. From offering simple and awkward thanks and settling back into their old familiar patterns, to making a heartfelt declaration and blowing this thing between them wide open. In the end, well aware that he still felt somewhat shaky, he decided to settle for the simplest one. “Can you help me up?”</p><p>Frey, who heard his every single thought as it crossed his mind, blinked for a long moment and then did so. He clambered up to his own feet, endearingly awkward, and then offered a hand back down to him. It was easy enough to grab it, to scramble up with the aid of it, and then they were standing in the middle of the street with each other instead of sitting; still incredibly close, still practically sharing each other’s air. They stared at each other for a long moment and then, by mutual assent and he genuinely wasn’t sure if that was a relief or a disappointment, slowly started to walk away together.</p><p>The atmosphere between them was heavy, almost portentous, and he didn’t know what to do with it. He decided that it was best to get the tone back to a lighter one, to try his best to dispel both the gloom and the strangely tentative feelings pulsing between them. “That’s one thing we should’ve thought to try before now, though.”</p><p>Frey cast him a sideways glance, and he got the decided impression that he was equally unsure how to proceed with what had just been revealed between them. “What?”</p><p>“The whole death thing,” he said, and attempted to give a casual shrug. Not exactly the kind of thing to joke about, but Frey hadn’t seemed to mind his rather morbid sense of humour all that much before. “After all, if one of us actually died presumably the other one would be free to do whatever the fuck he wanted…”</p><p>The atmosphere did change at that, but it was hardly in the way that he’d been expecting or wanting. Frey stopped dead in the middle of the street, rage pulsing along the bond. He glanced back at him, confused, and was startled to see an expression of pure fury crossing over his face and erasing any of the still lingering relief that’d been there.</p><p>“Percy?” He asked, and was stunned by how tentatively his voice emerged.</p><p>Frey didn’t attempt to soothe him, or sneer at him, or even poke him into an argument. He simply looked at him again, his eyes dark with rage now. “Fuck you, Nine Nails.”</p><p>He had been expecting a lot of things, but even he had to admit that he’d hardly been expecting that.</p><p>“Fuck you, and the fucking horse that you rode in on,” Frey spat, only growing more angry at his stunned silence. Utter rage was pulsing down the bond, but it was so much more than that. There was disappointment there too, and hurt, and an utterly primal terror that he’d never dreamed anybody could feel for the sake of him. “You think that I want you dead? You think that I want you hurt in any way? You think that I don’t care about you after every single fucking thing that we’ve been through together? Because I do care, you fucking idiot, and I only needed this fucking bond to realize what has been completely fucking obvious since I came to this stupid fucking city! You are the only person in my life that I have ever genuinely wanted, that I have ever genuinely chosen without being forced to. You are the one thing that has kept me sane through all of this bullshit. You are <i>everything</i> to me, and if you’d actually died- if you’d actually left me- If you’d actually been <i>gone</i>...”</p><p>Frey trailed off into a choked silence, and he stared in the aftermath of it. Every single word that he’d said was true, he could feel it through the bond. And the thought that his Frey, his ever so spiky Frey, cared for him so very deeply even after everything they’d done to each other…</p><p>“Lassie,” he breathed, and heard his voice shake as he spoke.</p><p>“Fuck you, Nine Nails,” Frey repeated, soft and defeated, turned on his heel without another word and walked away.</p><p>--</p><p>
  <b>v. Sex</b>
</p><p>He took a long moment, after that fairly disastrous conversation, to think about what he was going to do next. A large part of him, he wasn’t going to lie, wanted to go back to burying his head in the sand and ignoring everything that was happening between them… But no, he deserved far better than that. Frey deserved far better than that. They <i>both</i> deserved far better than that, and it didn’t take much thought to visualise what that far better involved.</p><p>He decided not to go for the simplest action this time, but rather the most direct one. Which found him standing in an extremely familiar hoity toity part of Edinburgh late at night, knocking stubbornly at an also extremely familiar front door until - to his surprise and joy - it opened and revealed Frey.</p><p>He wondered, for a moment, if he was about to get a door slammed unceremoniously in his face. He resisted the urge to attempt to put his foot in before that could happen, determined that Frey deserved a choice in this situation too. “Hi.”</p><p>“Hello.” Frey stared at him for a long moment, his face unreadable and the bond oddly quiet. And then, to his profound relief, he inclined his head in the briefest nod and stepped back. “Please, come in.”</p><p>It was more polite than he would’ve liked, considering that he was now apparently absurdly fond of Frey’s customary spikiness, but it was something. He trailed after Frey obediently, allowed him to lead him into his house and up the stairs and into one of the more intimate sitting rooms on the first floor. He would’ve liked to say that he was still paying attention to his surroundings as he made his way through but he wasn’t, he was only paying attention to Frey.</p><p>“No Layton?” He asked when they were finally both settled, him on one absurdly fancy couch and Frey sat safely across from him on the other one.</p><p>“No, I gave him the night off,” Frey said, still so much quieter than usual, and forced himself to meet his eyes. A tentative feeling was coming down the bond, one that felt a great deal more like hope than he ever would’ve expected. “I knew - hoped - that you’d be coming.”</p><p>“It’s like you can see the future, instead of just the inside of my head,” he joked, and was strangely pleased when Frey didn’t even give him the ghost of a smile. Frey wasn’t trying to please him, wasn’t at all interested in doing so, and if that wasn’t a hopeful sign he didn’t know what was. “I came to say that I’m sorry for earlier. I honestly meant it as a joke, but I’m aware that’s not much of an excuse considering what we’ve been through lately. I didn’t mean to paint you as some kind of uncaring psycho who wants me dead so he stops being inconvenienced. You deserve better than that, even if you do have a massive stick up your arse.”</p><p>“Only you would insult me when trying to give me an apology.” Frey sniffed, but he got mainly amusement down the bond. It seemed like the lassie protested too much, he was nowhere near as against his teasing as he pretended to be. “Thank you, Nine Nails, I accept your apology. And should probably offer you one myself.”</p><p>It was a shock. About as shocking as every single other event from the past month, granted, but it still made him blink. “Do I need one?”</p><p>“I think so. I overreacted out there, as much as it pains me to say it. I took what was quite obviously meant to be a joke, and turned it into an excuse to scream at you as I pleased. You certainly deserved better than that, even if you are a Scottish madman seemingly incapable of making good decisions, and I’m sorry for it.” Frey hesitated for a long moment, and the sense of amusement that he was getting down the bond rapidly faded. “It’s just…”</p><p>He waited for half a minute, but he had never been much more patient than that. “Just?”</p><p>“I felt you <i>die</i>, Nine Nails,” Frey said, and his voice was so raw that he had to wince at it.  There were a thousand worlds of pain in that tone, a thousand memories of the people he’d lost throbbing down the bond and making him ache in sympathy. “I thought that I was going to- I thought that you were going to be gone. I couldn’t be reasonable, not after that.”</p><p>It was the most honest that Frey had ever been with him, and he got the sense that it wasn’t even because of the bond. He hesitated for a long second, but there was no point in hesitating in the face of that. He stood up slowly, trying not to startle Frey, and moved across until he could sit besides him on his absurdly fancy couch.</p><p>“I do have one piece of defence,” he offered eventually, only when he was sure that Frey wouldn’t revert right back to old behaviours and shove him off again.</p><p>Frey sent him a sideways glance, but didn’t seem particularly inclined to pull away. Instead he moved closer, subtly shifting until their sides were almost pressed against each other. “Mm?”</p><p>“I genuinely didn’t think you cared that much about me,” he said, and tried to project how honest he was being down the bond. He wanted Frey to believe him, he wanted the two of them to finally have an honest conversation and sort all of this out. “Not after I had to fuck you to save the world, or after I’ve been forcing myself into your head for the past month, or after I wanked myself off to drive you nuts, or after… Everything. I feel like you shouldn’t, somehow.”</p><p>“I feel like I shouldn’t either, but that doesn’t change the fact that I do,” Frey said quite simply, still glancing at him sideways. The rawness there, the willingness to finally be open with each other, took his breath away. “Since before the whole, ah, sleeping together to save the world thing if I’m being honest.”</p><p>Frey could’ve turned into a chicken and danced the polka, and he would’ve genuinely been less shocked. He thought, dazedly, about what to say for a long few minutes and finally came up with an extremely intelligent, “oh.”</p><p>“You should still be the most annoying person on this planet to me. The mouthy Scottish detective who keeps ruining my life with his absurd accent, terrible fashion sense and bizarre beliefs,” Frey said matter of factly, seeming almost amused at how stunned he was. “In a lot of ways you still are, I suppose. But then there’s also <i>this</i> on top of it: the fact that I don’t want you to die, the fact that I liked everything we did together, the fact that I still want to spend time with you even when I absolutely shouldn’t. I’m not sure how to deal with it all, to be perfectly honest.”</p><p>“You could avoid telling me that you wish you’d never met me again,” he said mildly, his mind still whirling. “You know, just a suggestion.”</p><p>“I…” Frey hesitated for a long moment, blinking at him and feeling horribly awkward. He wondered if this was how Frey felt a great deal of the time, and winced. “I’m sorry for that, but I did mean it at the time.”</p><p>He frowned, feeling a little horribly awkward himself.</p><p>“It isn’t really anything against you,” Frey said, and a genuinely apologetic feeling flowed down the bond along with his words. Frey had apologised to him today more times than in the previous few years of their acquaintance combined, and he genuinely wasn’t sure how to feel about it. “It’s just that before I met you my life was neat and regulated, with everything in its right place and nothing ever to trouble me. And then I met you, and my entire world opened up. Suddenly nothing was in place and nothing was regulated, and I was constantly feeling things that I’d never felt before. And… It was just a lot, that’s all.”</p><p>“Well,” he said softly, and wasn’t entirely surprised to realize that he knew entirely what Frey was getting at. Maybe they hadn’t needed the bond so much to get them in sync, as to remind them that they already were. “You aren’t alone in that.”</p><p>It was Frey’s turn to be surprised, he felt it echoing down the bond in a way that he wasn’t even going to pretend wasn’t satisfying. “I’m not?”</p><p>“Nope, shocking as it must be,” he said wryly, and sent Frey a far softer smile than he meant to. “Before I met you my life wasn’t exactly happy or ordered, but it progressed in a certain way. I buried myself in my work, I cast anything that troubled me out of my life, I went only for nice boys and girls who smiled at me and joked with me and made things easy. And then I met you. And suddenly I had a life outside of work, a thousand things that I was ready to keep trying at even when they were annoying and an incredibly attractive English Lass insulting me at every turn.”</p><p>“I guess we’ve both brought each other back to life, in certain ways,” Frey said softly, and kept staring at him with his heart in his eyes. It was strange to see him being quite so open, but <i>so</i> deeply wonderful. “To be fair, you seem to take a fair amount of pleasure in the insults too.”</p><p>“Mm,” he said, and barely bit back a smile at Frey’s matter of fact tone. “<i>Maybe</i>, Lassie.”</p><p>He expected Frey to take offence at that, but instead there was just a briefly startled flare of pleasure and then a far more comfortable warmth. They sat there in silence for a long few moments, even closer together than before. He debated taking Frey’s hand, and stopped himself from doing that and more only by the narrowest of margins.</p><p>“So,” Frey was the first one to speak again, and he got a certain sense of temptation from his direction too. Almost as if Frey wanted him to take his hand, almost as if Frey wanted him to do all the other things that he could think of. “What do we do now? We can’t go back to just ignoring it, that seems perfectly obvious, but we also don’t seem to be making much progress in curing it. We’re stuck.”</p><p>“Aye,” he agreed, and was a lot less troubled by that fact than he probably should be. It said a lot, that the thought of ignoring <i>or</i> curing this thing between them suddenly seemed like the worst thing in the world. “There’s one other option we haven’t tried yet, though. We could just accept it.”</p><p>Frey sent him another sideways glance, trying to seem annoyed, but his feelings were far too fond for that. “What on earth do you mean, Nine Nails?”</p><p>“We’ve been acting like this, the bond, is the worst thing that’s ever happened to us,” he said, and braced his hands briefly on his knees. “But the way I see it, we’ve been through far worse things. Not least what happened between us on the mountain. Perhaps we should just accept it, perhaps we should just move on with our lives together and start using this to our advantage instead of angsting over it.”</p><p>Frey gave him a flat look, one that might have been completely successful if it wasn’t for the bond between them. “That’s totally insane.”</p><p>He smirked daringly, feeling content to push because of the bond. He was tired of letting either of them get away with lying to each other when this thing lingered between them. “You’re tempted, though.”</p><p>“Stop reading my mind, Nine Nails.” Frey sniffed again, still so fond underneath it again that he really had no other option but to start smiling like a loon. “I will point out, for the sake of clarity, that there’s at least one thing that you’ve got completely wrong.”</p><p>He had already won, and he knew it. He tried his best to repress his grin, though, for fear that it would hurt his face. “Oh?”</p><p>“What happened on the mountain wasn’t one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me. Or, I think, to us,” Frey said, perfectly matter of fact but for the slight twitch of his hands and the faint sense of nervousness drifting down the bond. “It was one of the most confusing things that’s happened to me, and one of the oddest, and one of the most deeply unsettling… But not the worst. It was good. In a lot of ways, it was one of the best.”</p><p>He was stunned yet again, and he couldn’t even mind it that much this time. All he could do was grope out with his hand in a shocked way, take Frey’s hand in his own and squeeze as hard as he possibly could.</p><p>“Don’t gawp so, Nine Nails,” Frey said sternly, but turned his hand in his grip until he could lace their fingers together in a clearer display of trust than he’d ever hoped to receive. “It makes you look terribly unattractive. Not that I expect you to care even half as much as you should, but <i>really</i>.”</p><p>“Sorry,” he said, not meaning it at all, and took the opportunity to move even closer still until they were practically pressed together. He reached out his free hand, finally slid his fingers back into Frey’s dark hair and dragged him in by it until their foreheads were firmly pressed together. “I suppose this is your way of telling me that you’re alright with accepting it all, then?”</p><p>“I guess so,” Frey said, and didn’t even try to pull away. Instead he only shifted closer, until they were sharing each other’s air and feeling each other even more intimately than they had before. “We probably need to have a discussion about what it’d look like, though.”</p><p>“Eh, probably,” he agreed, offhand, and used his grip in Frey’s hair - not quite as thick as his, but so soft that he kind of wanted to pet it forever - to tilt his head up so his lips were easily within reach. “The thing is, though, that the answer to that is quite simple. It’ll look like whatever we want it to look like, just like our relationship always has.”</p><p>They stared at each other for a long moment from up close, just a breath away from each other and sharing their emotions entirely. And then Frey slowly, very slowly, started to smile.</p><p>It was the simplest thing in the world to finally lean in again, to press their lips together in a desperate kiss and feel the bond unfurl between them at full and wonderful force.</p><p>--</p><p>In the end Frey’s bedroom was wonderfully close to the sitting room they’d been talking in, a fact so convenient that he half wondered if Frey had planned it deliberately, and Frey proved himself wonderfully ready to take his hand and bodily drag him there.</p><p>They burst through the door, and hesitated for a long second as they stared at each other. And then Frey gave a gesture resembling a shrug and pushed the door shut behind him, and he grinned downright wolfishly and pushed Frey up against the wood in turn. They made out against the door for a long few minutes, Frey’s hands up in his hair and his body pressing Frey's hard against the wood and the two of them biting frantically at each other’s lips like they just couldn’t stop themselves.</p><p>“Maybe this is actually what we need to break it,” he suggested in the brief breaks between kisses, and reluctantly drew back just far enough that he could meet Frey’s impatient gaze. “Maybe we just needed to come - if you get me - full circle.”</p><p>“You are absurd,” Frey said with a surprising amount of dignity, considering the sense of scandalised amusement that was radiating through the bond, and yanked pointedly at the handfuls of hair he was still holding until he was forced to pay attention to the point at hand. “Please stop making ridiculously filthy jokes, and take your clothes off.”</p><p>That, quite frankly, was the most sensible thing that Frey had said in all the years that he’d known him. He took an obedient step back, and proceeded to tear off his clothes faster than he had in all his life. He downright ripped off his jacket, his shirt, and his undershirt. He kicked off his shoes, hastily pulled off his socks and heard his trousers rip as he yanked them down his thighs. He tore his underwear off too, so hard that he’d probably never be able to use them again. And then he was standing there, naked in the middle of the room and already half hard under Frey’s appreciative gaze.</p><p>Frey was trying to strip speedily too, obviously just as eager to get this thing going as he was, but he was a great deal less good at it. He had hastily tossed off his jacket, but was only halfway down the buttons of his shirt. He got the sense, and the echo of thoughts to go along with it, that Frey was reluctant to ruin his peacock clothing even when there was an inevitable orgasm at the end of it.</p><p>He was ridiculous, and he found that so endearing that he could barely stop himself from grinning like a loon. He stepped in, and took over so firmly that Frey was unable to do anything but drop his arms to his side and stare at him with wide eyes. He carefully unbuttoned Frey’s shirt, slid it neatly down his arms and made sure to fold it before he placed it to the side. He offered his undershirt the same careful treatment, albeit with a little more casual groping thrown in. He went down to his knees to remove first one shoe and then the other, then carefully slipped Frey’s socks off and balled them before shoving them carefully into one of the toes. He undid Frey’s trousers, again with just a little groping, and slid them carefully down his legs before again making sure to fold them once he’d gotten them off. He was even careful with Frey’s underwear, making sure not to tear them even a little bit.</p><p>In the end Frey was completely naked in front of him. In the end Frey was wide eyed, and trembling, and so genuinely grateful that he thought he might’ve been able to feel it even without the aid of the bond.</p><p>He was tempted to suck Frey’s cock into his mouth there and then, but that was probably a barrier best saved for another day. Instead he climbed carefully to his feet, and grinned at Frey from up close. “Know you care more for your fine trousers than me, Percy. Didn’t want to turn you off before we’d even begun.”</p><p>“Oh, shut up,” Frey said with a sniff, but he still only felt gratefulness with just a touch of overwhelming affection. When Frey kissed him again, hard and enthusiastic, it wasn’t a surprise so much as a thing to be savoured.</p><p>They staggered to Frey’s bed together, kissing all the way. When the backs of Frey’s knees hit the mattress he didn’t suddenly panic, as he’d half been fearing that he would, but rather automatically lapsed backwards with only the briefest startled noise as he went down. He followed him immediately, climbed back on top of him and pinned him to the bed with the force of his greedy kisses.</p><p>Frey wasn’t a practiced kisser, he’d outright said that he’d never kissed a man before him and it didn’t seem likely that he’d kissed many more women either, but he more than made up for it with his enthusiasm. He dragged him into kiss after biting kiss, seeming eager to participate in whatever he suggested. When he traced his tongue along the seam of Frey’s lips Frey only moaned and opened wide for him, when he nipped brutally at Frey’s mouth Frey only groaned and bit him in return, when he ground down against Frey’s beautiful body Frey only made airless noises of pleasure and bucked up against him. Jesus, his mind was already wild with all the things they could do with each other.</p><p>Frey whined at the very suggestion of that, echoing through their minds, and started to buck up against him even more eagerly. What he was hinting at was plain, and yet another incredibly good idea that he was extremely inclined to explore. He broke from Frey’s mouth reluctantly, and started to look desperately around for some oil.</p><p>“I don’t have any,” Frey said, reading his mind yet again, and went up on his elbows to give him an incredibly intense look. “Just use your tongue, Nine Nails, it worked well enough last time.”</p><p>He hesitated for a long moment… But Frey wasn’t lying at all, his memories of the last time - even frantic and in a cave as it has been - were all edged around with a hazy pleasure and a downright longing to do it all again. He smiled to himself, receiving a sharp edged baring of teeth from Frey in turn, and grasped Frey’s shoulder to turn him over onto his stomach.</p><p>He didn’t feel like waiting around, he’d been waiting around for a month now and his balls were practically blue as a result. He slid down the bed and down Frey’s body at the same time, and grabbed Frey’s thighs to force his legs open as far as they could go. And then he leant in, very deliberately, and trailed his tongue from the top to the bottom of Frey’s crack for the sheer purpose of making him lose his mind entirely.</p><p>Frey gave a choked off moan, bucking up against his mouth, and the feeling of pleasure through the bond was incredible. Obediently, knowing that he was only rewarding himself, he narrowed the area of his focus. He lapped deliberately at Frey’s rim, licking at it and scraping it with his stubble and even nipping at it until Frey was practically melting onto the bed underneath him. Until Frey was entirely his, weak and wanting and willing to do whatever the fuck he pleased.</p><p>It was hard to focus on rimming Frey, considering that he half felt like he was melting under the pleasure himself, but he forced himself to work through it. He kept lapping at Frey’s rim with an intense focus and, when he judged that the outside was damp enough, used his tongue to push slowly inside. Frey’s arse was just as sweet as he’d remembered: the sharp taste of sweat, the heat of the inside, the way that his inner walls clenched around him until he could think of absolutely nothing else.</p><p>It wasn’t long, as he fucked his tongue into his arse, before he started to sense Frey getting impatient down the bond. And it also wasn’t long before Frey started making active noises of protest, fucking back eagerly on his tongue in a way that left no ambiguity as to what he wanted next.</p><p>Frey was such a good boy, and the pleading down the bond was so very endearing, that it didn’t take much to convince him that he deserved the entire world on a fucking platter. He carefully shifted until he was resting on only one hand, and slid the other between Frey’s thighs. He didn’t penetrate with his fingers quite yet, still content to continue just using his tongue, but he did press them very deliberately against Frey’s damp entrance and caress the tender skin there.</p><p>Frey made another sharp noise of protest, this one closer to a wail than anything else, and then opened up the bond between them full force. As far as tactics went it was a fucking genius one, even if it did almost make him come there and then onto the sheets of the bed instead of in Frey’s arse. He took in a deep breath, pulling his tongue briefly back, and then thrust in again with both tongue and one of his fingers. Two could play at that game, two could be driven totally out of their mind.</p><p>A brief sensation of smugness echoed down the bond, but it was soon replaced with a steadily growing desperation and an almost frantic sense of pleasure. He would’ve smirked, if he hadn’t currently had his mouth against Frey’s arse, but instead he channelled his energy into taking Frey apart entirely. He fucked him with tongue and finger in time, and then added a second finger just as Frey was starting to ease into it but just before he was truly ready. God, he had never wanted to make his partners <i>sob</i> before but suddenly - presented with a man such as Frey - he didn’t want to do anything but.</p><p>Frey let out a desperate cry at the combination of his fingers and his thoughts, and managed to calm himself again only with effort. He remained on his stomach for a long moment, panting weakly into the pillows, and then slowly clambered up to his hands and knees with  not inconsiderable effort. “<i>Now</i>, Nine Nails.”</p><p>He was tempted to just leave Frey hanging, to tease him until he broke properly and downright begged for his cock, but again he was aware that he’d only be torturing himself too. Instead he grabbed Frey’s shoulder, none too gently, and turned him over onto his back again with a level of desperation that only seemed natural.</p><p>Frey was fully hard. His eyes were wide and desperate, his skin was flushed and his chest was heaving with every breath. Down the bond he got a sense of desperation, and longing, and happiness so sharp that it was almost painful. He was incredibly, awe-inspiringly beautiful inside and out.</p><p>“Ach, Lassie,” he breathed, already close to undone, and lined himself up with Frey’s entrance.</p><p>He went in slowly at first, just as he had on the plinth before matters had overwhelmed them. He couldn’t exactly promise that matters wouldn’t overwhelm them this time, but he at least wanted to try and make this entire experience better for Frey. It wasn’t like he was an absolute expert in sex, he really hadn’t had much desire for anybody between his parents dying and Frey coming into his life, but he still found that he wanted to show Frey the ropes rather desperately.</p><p>Frey, however, had a somewhat different idea of how quickly they should be going. He remained still for a long moment, obviously getting used to the feeling of being penetrated on a surface that wasn’t a stone plinth in a cold cave, but very soon recovered enough to hook an ankle around his back and <i>yank</i> him balls deep. </p><p>He had never had a partner so grabby before, had never particularly wanted one, but now he found himself utterly charmed by the idea. Frey was tight, and hot, and the feelings through the bond - of being penetrating and penetrated all at once - were so overwhelming that he almost came on the spot. Instead he just about managed to pant through his mouth, lowered his head until he could nose kisses along Frey’s uncharacteristically dishevelled hairline. “<i>Lassie</i>.”</p><p>Frey whimpered briefly at the word before he managed to muffle the sound, but the damage was already done. He could feel what hearing such an innocuous thing, formerly an insult used to tear him down a peg or two, did to him and he <i>liked</i> it. He propped himself up on his elbows again, also with not inconsiderable effort, and grinned down at Frey wildly. Frey blinked up at him for a moment, desperate, before his eyes narrowed and he attempted to use his legs to yank him in again.</p><p>“Lassie,” he breathed again, determined to use this new discovery to his advantage, and decided that if Frey didn’t particularly want tender treatment then he most certainly wasn’t going to receive it. He set up a steady rhythm almost immediately, the two of them falling into it as automatically as they’d fallen into everything else between them. He pinned Frey to the bed deliberately with his bulk, made sure to knock his thighs even further apart and drove into him again and again until his eyes were dazed with the force of his pleasure.</p><p>He kept murmuring ‘lassie’ throughout, and was thrilled to find that Frey shuddered and moaned at the word every single time. He was so responsive to it, he was so responsive to <i>everything</i>. He snapped his hips brutally, and he groaned. He ran his hands down Frey’s side, desperate to find all the places that made him writhe, and he whined and arched into every single touch. He kissed him again and again and again, and Frey downright whimpered against his lips and flung his mind wide open with an abandon that he’d never expected but was determined to cherish.</p><p>The force of the bond made everything so much more overwhelming than even the first time between them, and he genuinely wasn’t sure if that was better or just designed to drive him even more out of his mind with lust. It was like he was feeling two sets of pleasure at once, both of them equally intense. He kissed Frey’s mouth, and he felt what it was like for Frey to be kissed. He touched Frey’s body, both harshly and tenderly, and he felt skin underneath his fingertips and also fingertips against his skin. He thrust into Frey’s body again and again, and it was like he was penetrating while being penetrated all at once.</p><p>It was all a bit too much, and he’d never once expected to love it quite as much as he did. He desperately groped for Frey’s hair again, tangled his fingers tightly in the dark strands before bringing his head up for a brutal kiss that he felt through every bit of him. And then he released his grip, trailed his hand down the side of Frey’s face before dipping in again and tightening it around his throat.</p><p>He’d expected Frey to be against this in at least some way, but instead - just like on the mountain - he seemed so much more into being pawed at than he ever would’ve guessed. Frey allowed himself to be pressed back against the pillows by his throat, allowed himself to be gripped ever so tightly, allowed himself to be moved without any say in the direction he was going. Frey allowed absolutely everything, as his cock swelled and jumped and left streaks over both of their stomachs.</p><p>Their rhythm was properly falling apart now, collapsing in a way that was chaotic and wonderful all at once, and he knew for a fact that neither of them particularly cared. He tightened his grip around Frey’s throat, to the point where he could sense that it was right on the edge of being painful, and pinned him brutally to the bed. Frey responded by tightening his long legs around his waist, squeezing them until he felt like the breath was being crushed from his lungs. They moved together desperately, still perfectly in time but both of them utterly lost in each other.</p><p>And what better thing to be lost in? Their entire worlds narrowed to each other, and neither of them could particularly bring themselves to care. There was only the tightness of his hand around Frey’s throat, the tightness of Frey’s legs around his waist. There was only the feeling of Frey’s sweat slicked body moving desperately underneath him, the feeling of his sweat slicked body moving desperately on top of Frey. There was only the sense of airless joy rising ever higher in Frey’s chest, and the sense of airless joy rising ever higher in his. There was only <i>their</i> pleasure, boiling ever higher in the both of them at once until…</p><p>They came together, at what he suspected was exactly the same moment. He wasn’t exactly sure, though, with the force of two orgasms hitting him at once. He’d thought the first time that they’d come together had been the most intense experience of his life, but this was something else entirely. The force of his pleasure, of their pleasure, hit him like a tsunami; it swept everything away in its wake, it left him with nothing and gloriously happy about that fact.</p><p>They flopped together in the aftermath for a while, catching their breath and slowly regaining the ability to think. Eventually he slowly unwound Frey’s legs from around his waist, ignoring the grumbled noise of protest as he did so, and unwound his hand from around Frey’s throat. And then he pulled back and out, flopped on the bed besides Frey’s panting form and tried to gather himself even further.</p><p>“So,” he managed eventually, which perhaps wasn’t the most coherent beginning but was about as much as he could manage after all of that.</p><p>Frey remained lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. He didn’t glance over in his direction, but he didn’t need to. He could feel the sense of tentative happiness radiating through the bond, totally unexpected and making everything breathless and wonderful all at once. “So?”</p><p>“Nothing seems to have changed,” he said. And, because god forbid he ever learn to behave sensibly, reached out to flick the head of Frey’s oversensitive cock and prove his point in the most annoying way possible. “The soulbond is still firmly in place, at any rate.”</p><p>Frey finally sent him a sideways glare at that, but it was one of the least impressive efforts he’d ever managed. He still looked like himself, all spiky and unpleasant and stubbornly determined to fight every moment, but there was a softening around his edges that suited him surprisingly well. “How… Terrible.”</p><p>“Indeed, so sad,” he said solemnly, and dared to remove his hand from Frey’s cock and nudge him in the side instead. Frey had responded with open annoyance every other time he’d tried such a thing, but somehow he thought his chances of getting away with it had suddenly become about a thousand times better. “Guess we’ll just have to try and break it a few more times in a few different positions. You know, for science.”</p><p>Frey just stared at him for a long second, feeling incredulous. And then, very slowly and wonderfully, started to smile. And then, even more wonderfully, started to <i>laugh</i>.</p><p>Maybe, he thought beaming, this wasn’t the worst thing that could’ve happened to them after all.</p><p>--</p><p>
  <b>Epilogue</b>
</p><p>It was several months later, on an impromptu clear out of his library when he couldn’t sleep no matter how warm Frey was besides him, that he finally found the other half of the books that Katerina had left him.</p><p>“Nine Nails?” A sleepy voice interrupted him as he stared down at them. And he looked up, already knowing who it was and already feeling as giddy over it as ever, to find Frey standing sleepily in the doorway with his hair ruffled and his body only barely wrapped in a dressing gown. “What is it?”</p><p>“Nothing much,” he said softly, and made sure to stretch in that way that always had Frey’s eyes leaping appreciatively to the muscles of his chest. It was technically scandalous to go around without a shirt on, but he had argued that nobody in either of their houses was likely to give them away and Frey had eventually accepted that point with the aid of a few persuasive blow jobs. “Shouldn’t you still be passed out?”</p><p>“You’re not quite that good, Nine Nails,” Frey scoffed, but the bond betrayed him. He wandered across to him slowly, draped himself across his bare back and ran sleepy fingers through his hair. “Is that…?”</p><p>He could’ve attempted a lie, but Frey would’ve seen through him immediately and been none too impressed. He hesitated for a moment instead, and then sighed and reached up a hand to lay over Frey’s dressing gowned arm. “The other half of the books that Katerina gave me, yeah. The ones about the end of the world.”</p><p>“Huh,” Frey said intelligently, sounding strange and feeling just as strange down the bond. They looked at the books together for a long few moments in silence, both of them mutually a little taken aback.</p><p>“You know, if you wanted…” He started slowly, not looking at Frey. He kinda wanted to keep his mouth firmly shut, but knew that he had to give the guy at least some sort of out even after all this time. “I could read through it and see if there’s anything that can be done. It might take a bit of research, and a <i>lot</i> of help, but I’m sure we could manage something in the end.”</p><p>Frey remained silent for a long and thoughtful moment. When he finally gave into temptation and twisted around to look at him, there was a strangely determined expression on his face. “Eh, leave it.”</p><p>It was a shock, but a good one. He was still so unused to them facing good surprises together, over and over again. “You sure?”</p><p>“Yes, Nine Nails, I’m perfectly sure,” Frey said, tart as he usually was even after months in each other’s beds, and stepped around him smoothly. In the next moment he was sliding into his lap, with a seductive expression that should’ve been ridiculous but that still somehow succeeded in turning him on. “We have better things to focus on, after all.”</p><p>He slid his arms around that warm and narrow waist, shifted Frey just a little until he was straddling him more comfortably. His prissy English Lass, so stiff around everybody else and so willing to melt for him and only him. “Who woulda thought that the end of the world could lead to such wonderful things? Always look for the silver lining, I guess, you never know whose arse it’s going to be up.”</p><p>Frey rolled his eyes at his crudeness, but obviously knew full well that he could feel all his emotions. He wasn’t offended or scandalised at all, merely fond in a way that was still slightly disbelieving but absolutely sincere. “Stop philosophising, Nine Nails, and do something more productive with your time.”</p><p>“Ach, Lassie,” he whispered softly, and had the unique pleasure of seeing Frey’s eyes go soft at the endearment. “Your wish is my command.”</p><p>When he arched up to kiss him Frey leant down and met him halfway, a sleepy smile still on his lips and fondness still in his heart. Their kiss was as wonderful as it ever was, filled with a level of promise that he’d never dreamed to have.</p>
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